Media

Charles Lane is a smart guy, but his recent column in the Washington Post on higher education makes you wonder how much he has dug into that issue. 

If we comparison shop for clothes and cars, why can't we do the same for something as serious as prices for the most common medical procedures? Until very recently, these prices were a closely guarded secret, secluded in a unwieldy, outdated government database that interested researchers had to pay to access. This secrecy has a variety of consequences for all Americans, but particularly the uninsured.

On Friday, Paul Krugman dealt with financial market price bubbles, focusing specifically on emerging markets. He takes on the issue of bubble creation as a result of aggressive Fed loose money policy of the recent past. He correctly points out that the emerging markets situation is really one of a series of bubbles (commercial real estate, Asian securities, dot-com, residential real estate), referred to by George Soros as a “super bubble,” that has roiled through the economy since the 1980s.

If you don't like unions, pray for tight labor markets. Because when labor is scarce, the law of supply and demand raises wages and workers don't have big incentives to unionize. It's when market's aren't tight that unions become a must-have for workers seeking more pay. 

That insight explains a lot about the growing wave of fast-food strikes over the past year. The biggest strike yet is scheduled for this Thursday, August 29. These strikes are rapidly becoming the most significant labor activism in years, if not decades. 

The Cato Institute came out with a big study recently that argues the familiar point that generous welfare payments undermine incentives to work. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities promptly replied with a four-page paper rebutting key aspects of the report. 

Right now, eager 18-year-olds from across the country are tweeting with bravado photos of their newly postered dorm rooms and scanning with private fear their freshmen class schedules. They're embarking on a journey to capture their piece of the American Dream.

You know the drill — we have a dysfunctional political system and a gridlocked Congress. The House is firmly in the grip of a band of Republican maniacs and the Senate, though technically Democratic, requires a virtually impossible filibuster-proof majority to get anything passed.

So we should just throw up our hands and admit that nothing productive can be done in Washington until we get a Democratic Congress, right?

On the eve of a march to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, labor and civil rights activists are calling on President Barack Obama to honor King with an executive order that would raise wages for as many as two million workers.

One of the most poignant calls came Wednesday from Alvin Turner, a veteran of the famous 1968 Memphis garbage workers strike. Recalling a recent face-to-face meeting with Obama, Turner said “he told me personally he was working hard for the little man. If he don’t sign, he’ll disappoint me badly.”

Yesterday I wrote about why a tight labor market may not return any time soon to raise wages. But here's another scary thought: What if tight labor markets no longer push up wages like was once the case?